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Odyssey - Disliking Relic and Data Sites

I wound up having a somewhat bad morning in Eve where I forgot what I was doing and lost a ship and some boosters because of it. Trying to do to many things at once was not the best idea I had this morning. I next found myself having issues with Eve Mentat pulling my corporation sell orders. Tired, I decided to go back to the test server to see some of the changes and try out the new scanning game.

First: The new launcher deployment I'm getting used to. I keep logging myself out because I am used to hitting the PLAY button and after that, logging in. I'm somehow with it. I also don't care for the new position of the server numbers or maybe it is how it is laid out. I think the server population county should have its own color so that it stands out against the rest of the text.

However, due to the extended downtime CCP is saying sorry and giving out free skillpoints.
"During tomorrow's downtime we will add 50.000 skillpoints (representing roughly a day’s worth of intense skill training) to the character with the highest number of skill points on each active account (the presumed main)."
A change discovered by someone testing and confirmed when they sent a bug report: T3 (Strategic Cruisers) cannot enter 3/10 and 4/10 complexes. I'm not a fan of T3 cruisers. I have a legion as my probing ship simply because I needed a decent probing ship that had the tank to not die to 3 NPC frigates as my Anathema did. I will now probably switch back to an Anathema. It is cheaper then the Legion and I no longer have the need for that expensive ship with the changes to radar and mag (now relic and hacking) or whatever.

Scanning has caused a lot of anger. I'm not surprised. The system was complex, full of obscure knowledge and random things that you learn or don't learn by hit or miss. Once you became comfortable with it, it was a quick and efficient system. Add in the skill training and it was very immersive in a technical way. You spent a lot of time inside of the star map's system map. The probes also flare out in a 2,012m circle meaning you can cloak in the middle of them.

Things I've Noticed:

  • Moving stuff is much smoother now. It makes a lot more sense then it did. They listened to feed back.
  • Count down is back on the probes. They are not immortal.
  • Probes are STILL magical and auto return to cargo hold. I hate this.
  • Resizing probes by moving the bubble on the screen is easier then resiting them from the menu. The menu deselects all the probes after each action. Something I find irritating.
  • 100% scanned sites are saving properly now when you move the probes off of them and rescan elsewhere
  • Jump gate effects no longer minimize your windows/hud/overview.
  • The undock button has been moved to the station services menu. Its much, much much larger.
  • I launched 7 probes just fine
I was not finding a single site to try the new mini game. Frustrated  I was bouncing from system to system and I get a message that the test server is going down for an unscheduled reboot. Sigh. Once it came back up it had to patch and then I was off again on my quest.

That is when I noticed something interesting. My cosmic signatures that I had scanned down earlier in Egbinger were there again on my scanner overview. It must have remembered them? Curious I jumped to Muttoken, where I had also scanned. It seems that no it is not what I have scanned before. The system scanner automatically shows you that there are unscanned signatures in space. I don't think I fully realized this before. Now it seems that not only are the normal warp-to-able anoms on the scanner but also it is showing sites that need to be scanned down.  

I decided to drop probes and check. It seems to be so. Now you know how many signatures are in system by the initial system overlay scan. That is kind of blah. It takes away a lot of the wonder. The excitement when a site is found. The exhaustion when someone else has already done it. Now jump into a system, let the system scan itself, warp to the next gate and go. I stopped and scanned the systems that had no signatures on the scanner just to see if I was missing something or wrong. Nope.

I went to a Radar aka Date site and there were 3 NPCs. What happened to no combat in the Data/Archaeological sites? I must have missed that post in the threadnought or another dev post that has sprung up. I spent my entire time pointed and being shot by the NPCs in the first site.

The mini game is much more polished. It is still click click click but stuff now happens. I managed to get a spawn. The little tools work. I think the entire thing is stupid. It is not engaging at all. It is a rediculious click fest. I find more interest in chasing down the spreading cans then this 'mini game'.


I realized that my cargo hold was already full so I don't know if I actually got anything. I did grab about half a dozen of the little containers that spew out. I docked, dumped it and went to do more of the site. Only it despawned on me.  I went to find another one and that is when I learned that I am also very bad at scanning suddenly. I keep losing signatures. I don't have any of the scanning modules attached to my ship and I wonder if that is what I am missing. If so, that kind of sucks. I finally found a site to do and immediately ran into problems.

The site structure is not changed. This causes the new hacking container that spins to spawn inside of the large collidable object. It is ridiculous.


  •  I want to correct a slight misunderstanding. This was a miscommunication between me and Soundwave about the NPC removal and I apologize for not spotting this earlier.
  • NPCs are not being removed from wormhole sites.
  • We are only removing NPCs from "normal" k-space hacking and archaeology signatures (NPCs will only spawn in those sites when you fail at the challenge).
  • No changes are being made to NPCs in wormholes or COSMOS or other hacking/archaeology sites.
  • The reason for the removal is to allow explorers to play the game without having a combat ship on standby.
I guess my dreams of an Anathema are gone. One of my failed hacks caused a can to explode, damaging me through shields into armor without my shields going down much. It looks like if you fail the hack twice, it blows up and damages you. Again, dreams of fragile CovOps ships doing these sites, poof. Most of what I collected was also complete garbage. I was stunned.

When I warped out the entire structure exploded. Fancy way to despawn I guess. My drop was complete shit. Not only was I barely able to grab anything because of the broken structure but what I did grab was absolute trash.


That was from a data site. There are several types of cans that it spits out. More than a bit grumpy I went out to another system to try again, hopefully on a non-broken site. I stopped to fill out a bug report because I was mad and I'd be pissed if it made it like that onto the main server. I file that under 'broke ass shit'.

The clicking isn't what I call fun but it is what it is. This means you can scan down a site someone else is in and steal their cans. When you tractor in the cans (an automatic option upon double clicking if they are close enough) when it hits your cargo hold a tiny icon appears just under the safety button that shows you what you got. I only noticed this because an NPC was busy killing me due to my horrible ability to use lasers.

Hoping that I was just having bad luck I forged on to try to find some more 'data' sites looking for the decypters that make them so worthwhile. So far there are materials cans, equipment cans, scrap cans, and data cans. So far, everything I have picked up has been trash. I don't always get decent drops in Radar sites but this is useless, worthless junk. After doing 3 Radar sites and 1 Mag site (I'm too irritated to call them by their new names) and fighting through mini-game after mini-game, chasing cans, clicking and clicking and clicking and all of this in low sec (also being scramed by rats and such things) my haul was a waste of my time.


I expected to write this long thing about how the changes to mag sites and radar sites were totally worth it and how they would give greater value to group play without punishing groups by splitting small drops. However, solo players would still receive the same average reward. It was win win for everyone.

I am incredibly disappointed in my experience with the scanning system today on the test server.

Right now, I want to know where all the encryptors are and after that, is this really supposed to be worth my time? Normally, I get some machine parts, some blue prints, a decryptor or two and many some random things. In a mag site I wind up with handfuls of low value salvage. This, is pathetic and not worth my time or anyone else's time to do these sites. I can only hope this is not the final drop roll because I'm rather disgusted with the time I spent doing this. The quality and profibility of Radar and Mag sites have just tanked. I'm hoping that I just had an abnormal day and poeople will get decent amounts of stuff somehow. I've had plenty of days where I didn't get much useful but something about getting heaps and heaps of trash bothers me. 

Now, according to CCP Soundwave the loot tables are better and they readded faction tower BPCs to the mix.
"Loot table was doubled and more items were added (cap rigs, faction towers etc). It's more valuable than current TQ."

I decided to end my session by looking at the new podding animation. It is very clear now that you are dead. No matter how scrolled up there is a big, flaming explosion in your face. Your corpse then floats around as a black outline and a notification in the bottom left hand of the screen notifies you that your clone is activating and to update it.


Comments

  1. I was really looking forward to this expansion, and the way they introduced the changes made it appear like it would be awesome. After reading the feedback thread and blog posts like these that explain how it actually works, I'm starting to get depressed about Odyssey.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really, really, really wanted to like this.

      I really, really, really loathe it. If the loot tables continue to suck this much doing these sites is not going to be worth my time. Maybe in high sec, where people are not scanning me down and trying to kill my expensive ship at every waking moment for me to receive a hand full of trash that isn't worth the fee to sell it.

      I'm going to try to keep my responses constructive on the forums and pray for some type of improvement in the drops. I'm sure that the cans in the gas sites are like this and that already has a low enough spawn rate to now spawn into a cloud of cans. Ugh.

      Delete
  2. Every youtube video and description of the new radar and mag sites has said the loot is terrible and the minigames stupid. Even JohnnyPew had to try to put a brave face on when working through the minigame.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah, yes... The Bittervet gets stronger in this one. I like the new changes. Scanning is way faster, with that of course Combat Scanning (I live in WH). The old system was clunky. The new Minigame is better than watching the hacker cycle. The loot... well, the I didn´t get any good loot in the Sisi. Maybe the loot table is a testversion or something.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mini-games don't improve my life in any game. It is not some special bitterness for Eve. I've never found them adding anything. Mix in the distraction that it causes with the dangers of low sec and the lack of reward and it is an even more bleh addition. I'm sure plenty of people think mini-games are fantastic and improve their gameplay. I don't.

      Delete
  4. The high-sec sites should be nerfed a bit (mainly radars) from their current state. But as you said, the loot drops on sisi in low-sec (and pressumably high-sec?) are terrible. I get small arms and other worthless junk. From approx 8 data sites I got 1 decryptor and a few hundred K ISK in other loot. Given that plus the fact you are distracted away from dscan, I'm currently at a loss as to why anyone would want run these sites in low-sec.

    Once Odyssey goes live, the only "exploration" I'll be doing is scanning the sites down in low-sec and then waiting cloaked in system. Once I see someone with core probes out I'll be dscanning all the sigs I previously probed down until someone appears at one. I'll then jump on them right around the time they're involved in the mini game / loot grabbing click fest (i.e. when they are not clicking dscan). Odyssey Exploring = Bring plenty of *friends or die.

    Whilst I'm waiting for my prey to turn up, I'll be belt ratting and blowing up the very lucrative tag rats, hopefully getting some gf's along the way.

    *friends who are happy to share a few thousand ISK for an hour of effort.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've managed to get some decryptors from the data sites. They were in the big container though and not in the mini containers that get spewed out on success. I think it might've been bugged though since I at first didn't need to hacl the sites to being able to grab them.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have yet to test out the most recent build but the last build I did testing on had me convienced that the radar/mag sites were so incomplete that the items in the spewed cans where just place holders. Doing some more reading on the forums would seem to indicate I need to get out of denial and accept the great expo nerf of 2013.

    On the plus side of things, I am in love with whoever they have working on the sensor overlay and scanner interface. Keeps getting better and better. It will be such a joy to scan things down, too bad it keeps looking like there won't be shit worth scanning down.

    ReplyDelete
  7. the hacking sites are a total fail. you spend a tedious amounts of time for little reward. my conclusion to the new exploration system scanning systems is it was created just to make it easier for pvp to hunt. which is fine for those that do. i just wish ccp was more upfront about it thats all.

    ReplyDelete
  8. If exploration really is this bad, I can't think of a reason that would keep me in low sec. I really hope this isn't the final state.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I wasn't liking the changes in the small amount of time before the launcher borked up... mostly because the old hot/cold method of probing doesn't work if you only get the highest reading to date and it doesn't change. Ever...

    And then when I hit repair because it looked like the launcher had seriously crapped out, it repaired all the back to Tranquility. Ugh.

    Lastly, the new star gate effects. While I think they're very pretty, the rotating screen has a tendency to make me fell a little motion sick (I have ship shake turned off for the same reason). God only knows what a roam is going to do to me.

    Hopefully, by June 4 things will be sorted....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mine repaired back to Tranquility as well. I then had to remake my short cut and wait through the patch.

      A lot of people want to turn the effect off. I expect a general out cry after the patch where they give us an option to stop it. I urge you to add your voice to the form thread but I am fearful that its going to be like the UI changes.

      Delete
  10. Did some more testing on relic and data sites to check out the loot and the null sec ones aren't too bad. Utilizing a cargo scanner significantly increases the site completion time since you can skip the hacking mini game on the useless cans. However, it still sucks when you do run into the rare 200 mil drop and miss it becasue you couldn't scoop 4-10 cans. Most radars in null had 3-5 decryptors, but to run the hacking mini game and scoop so many cans for 15-30 mil I found quite annoying.

    So my thought the best approach for radars is probably just to blitz themfor ship data interfaces. If you can get at least one a hour then that aint too bad yea?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pretty much, but it makes it a terrible mechanic that has to be solved with such a work around. And I live in low sec which isn't exactly non-dangerous space yet the drops you get are often so much shit.

      The reports on the thread for today's server update and loot table updates is that the drops are improved and there are fewer cans. They are also talking about trying to increase the icon size for clicking. I'll wander into it Monday and see how it feels.

      I'm spending more time doing exploration on the test server than in game. I'm starting to feel kinda dumb about it.

      Delete
    2. Yea I just launched sisi to check out the patch. OMG and the loots are a lot better comapred to the last build. If I had to guess nearly double, and if there are fewer cans on top of that it is going to be insane. Here is an example of what ive found so far off one of the more common null sites. Going to actually start running some sites to see about the can thing.

      http://gyazo.com/c85fae5dccc780ad1b542fd5454a3ad3

      Delete
    3. Yea the most recent changes are nuts, null sec sites easily ranging from 50-200 with potential to be much higher as well. Still sucks when you get unlucky and don't loot your 60 mil in t2 salvage or miss your 200 mil bpc but the average payout is going to be much much higher that it might make that unpleasent feeling not too bad.

      Delete
  11. At the very minimum, they should remove NPCs completely from all Data and Relic sites in k-space (at least!). If this is done, at the very least, one can explore alone in a Covert Ops frigate and not worry far too much about the mini-game causing death by distraction from D-Scan and NPCs that spawn and gank you. I really didn't want to have to continue to risk Pilgrims on LowSec exploration. It's sometimes hard enough right now without these mini-games. Add the mini-games and crap loot and I will be at a total loss since each Pilgrim loss costs me 200 million ISK to replace.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe they say they are removing these but they have to do it site by site and it is taking a long time. The thread managed to convince Soundwave that the 'punishment' spawn was senseless. I believe the new punishment is supposed to be even more cans.

      Delete

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